A. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to automated electrical business practices, and relates more particularly to operations research including automated surveying and reporting of service performance.
B. Description of the Related Art
Currently there is little or no information available to consumers regarding the real-time network performance of many network service providers. For example, it is difficult or impossible for a consumer to determine which of three competing long distance companies, for example, drops the fewest calls, or is currently experiencing the least congestion.
Further, there is little or no information available to consumers relating to the level of customer service a business is currently providing its customers, or how that level of service compares with the business's competitors, especially at a quantitative level. For example, it is difficult or impossible for a consumer to determine which of three computer hardware vendors, for example, currently has the shortest hold time on their toll-free helpdesk, or which of the three drop the fewest calls, or which of the three has the most complex set of interactive voice response unit (IVRU) menus through which a customer is required to navigate.
There currently exist many examples of internal call center performance analysis and reporting products that enable call centers to better manage call processing. These include:                E-talk (www.e-talkcorp.com) which offers a suite of products called the e-talk Performance System™, that includes:                    E-talk Recorder—allows for the selective recording of voice interaction between agent and customer, as well as agent computer desktop activity, and may include data entry, screen navigation and data retrieval. Recorded information may be synchronized for playback and analysis.            E-talk Advisor—a data analysis product that incorporates information from individual agent customer interactions, automatic call distribution (ACD) data, and the like, to produce detailed reports documenting trends in service and productivity.            E-talk Survey—a voice response unit (VRU) based application that enables call center managers to conduct customer surveys regarding service levels without notifying the associated agent (as described in www.etalkcorp.com/Products/index.cfm?aid=685&CFID=166 030&CFTOKEN=82872371                        Chadbourn Marcath Inc. (www.chadbourn.com) offers the Call Center Solutions® product suite—a complete line of management information products that improve the operation of call centers. “Using data from the Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) software on your telephone switch, Call Center Solutions® highlights, translates and delivers actionable ACD information to call center management, supervisors, agents and callers.” The product suite includes:                    CC Advisor—a real-time queue and agent monitoring designed for supervisors;            CC Analyzer—performs management reporting with real-time historical graphs and reports;            CC Broadcaster—provides real-time displays for agents on televisions, through reader boards, or a window on a LAN workstation.            CC Announcer—provides wait time announcements for callers holding in queue.                        
Currently there are many Web site performance measurement products and services available. Providers include:                Gomez Advisors, Inc. which monitors, measures and analyzes e-commerce to provide online decision support tools for customers and marketing solutions for businesses. Gomez provides an unparalleled view of online customer experience by combining industry specific expertise, a thoroughly objective and extensive Internet evaluation methodology, and high-quality ratings and reviews of online businesses (as described at http://www.gomeznetworks.com/mktg/about/about1.asp).                    “The Gomez Performance Network is a real-time network that provides real-time site and transaction performance metrics from over 50 global regions on 21 backbones across the Internet. Metrics provide HTTP and Transaction details to identify service issues by network, application, and/or provider.”                        Precise Software Solutions offers enterprise-wide performance management solutions:                    “These solutions provide a complete, correlated end-to-end view of performance, both at the Information Technology (IT) component level and at the user-specific “business level”. At the business level, Precise measures end-to-end application response time, segments response time by IT component, gauges service quality in business terms, baselines performance, identifies performance deviations, and trends performance levels to facilitate strategic IT planning. At the IT level, the modules of the Precise performance management suite proactively capture, measure, and correlate performance metrics from all critical system components—the database, the operating system, the ERP or custom application server—to provide a holistic view of application performance. Instead of monitoring each system component in isolation, Precise solutions pinpoint the causes of performance problems in context and determine those problems' impact on the application—before those problems impact users (as described in http://www.precise.com/company/). Their products include:            Precise/Insight™—Measures end-to-end application response time and segments response time by IT component.            Precise/SQL®—Delivers total application and database performance management.            Precise/Interpoint™—Optimizes enterprise resource planning (ERP) application performance.            Precise/Pulse!™—Proactively monitors and alerts on system-wide performance.                        Precise/Foresight™—Provides a forward looking view of system performance        Savant Diagnostic Center™—Real-time and historic diagnostics”        Keynote Systems provides Web site performance measurement, diagnostic, load-testing and benchmarking services.                    “Keynote has systematically built an infrastructure of over 1000 strategically placed measurement computers connected to the Internet via key backbone providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in 120 statistically selected locations across 50 metropolitan areas worldwide. Keynote utilizes these measurement computers to automatically access Web sites and perform transactions form a wide variety of geographic locations 245 hours a day, 7 days a week, and to accurately and realistically generate test loads against Web sites. The measurement data is available in real-time to clients through any standard Web browser.            Keynote provides its clients with Web application performance measurement data such as average page download times from the customer perspective, purchasing processing and credit card transaction processing time, and pre- and post-deployment Web site load testing data. The measurement data allows Web site operators to assess the availability and reliability of their own and their competitors' Web sites from an end-users perspective. The company also offers diagnostic services to help pinpoint and improve problem areas related to performance. With this data in hand, Keynote clients are able to better track and benchmark their online performance, assure customer satisfaction, monitor the competition and proactively address Web site performance problems” (as described in http://www.precise.com/company/).                        
The present invention addresses certain of the shortcomings in existing technologies.